ALFORD CO

Alford worked hard to win our business by being very communicative prior to signing the contract. Once the contract was signed, however, as much as we worked to get good updates on where everything was in terms of his estimated costs versus the actual costs, we would not get any specific information. Because the company's reputation is so strong & they've been in this area for two generations, we wanted to think the best. Because the bank draws aligned with the estimate, it also appeared to be going as estimated. The timeline stretched into double the time he estimated, but we also tried to believe it was for good cause - again, because of the company's reputation. Closing day came and we shook hands, thrilled to have our beautiful, new home, chalking up the unexplained extra time as due to the company's quality work causing them to have so many other homes in the pipeline. Five weeks after closing, we received an additional bill for several tens of thousands of dollars, supposedly for our allowances and extras. The problem was, we'd carefully kept track of all those selections, so we knew this was inaccurate. They provided a 12 page line-by-line accounting of the costs and by going through this document carefully, we identified builder overages in the foundation, which exceeded their estimate by 57%, and lumber/framing materials, which exceeded their estimate by 58%, and these amounts accounted for most of the additional costs. We've built much larger homes twice before and have certainly never had bills presented to even one day after closing, not to mention five weeks later. There had been no change orders, which we expected, since we stayed to our original plan. But the contract also called for the builder to use the change order process to notify us if his costs significantly exceeded the estimate - which the Alford Company did not do. Without knowing about these extra costs, we'd made many decisions along the way based on the original estimate. Since the foundation and the framing were part of the house we got, we paid the bill. As we explain to folks when they ask: we have a well-built home but cannot recommend Alford based on such extremely poor business practices as these. A good builder must provide both a quality product supplied through quality business practices.